Our header photo really says it all. It was 2011 when Rives Potts' now four times Bermuda Race winner Carina rounded the Fastnet Rock in conditions a whole world away from the murky early morning eleven hours earlier, when George David's Rambler 100 had shed her keel, and the Baltimore lifeboat community saved all the crew in a combined operation in poor visibility. It wa done with skill and seamanship that tells us much about that special West Cork port, and alo how the Fastnet Rock has become the symbol of the spirit of offshore racing.
It meant that George and Wendy David established a close relationship with Baltimore, where one of Rambler 100's mangled steering wheels – damaged when her hull was being rolled upright - is on eloquent display on the wall inside the very hospitable Baltimore Sailing Club.
ROUND IRELAND PROMISE
It also meant that before leaving Baltimore in August 2011, George David was moved to announce – in an example of resilience that few could match - that his next boat would compete in the Round Ireland Race as a mark of gratitude to all Ireland.
Like a hot knife though butter – the mighty Rambler 88 somehow finds a gap between much smaller boats to make a full-speed start in the 2016 Round Ireland Race. On the right is Eric de Turckheim's A13 Teasing Machine, which as Phosphorus II (Mark Emerson) completed the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race 2024 on Thursday afternoon, June 27th. Photo: W M Nixon
SUPERNATURAL?
The story acquired an almost supernatural feel when the new Rambler 88 arrived in Wicklow for the 2016 Round Ireland, and won it in such exemplary style that the mono-hull record she established will probably be permanent, as she won overall on IRC as well.
Rambler we all know, but what's with Carina? Anyone who was interested in international offshore racing in the middle decades of the 20th Century will have been aware of the swashbuckling Wall Street denizen Dick Nye. He may have cut a successful swathe through the canyons of New York, but he was never happier than in spending many days at sea racing his Carina, with the Rhodes-designed Carina II of 1955 launching him on an international career of achievement which included winning the 1955 and the 1957 Fastnet Race, while also figuring at the front of the fleet in Bermuda and Transatlantic Races.
The Philip Rhodes designed yawl Carina II at Cowes. In Dick Nye's ownership, she won both the 1955 and 1957 Fastnet Races
ANTICIPATING THE IOR
In 1968 with the new IOR in the offing, he got Jim McCurdy - formerly Phil Rhodes' right hand man - to design a 48-foot sloop to show the new rule at its best, and the alloy Carina was the result. She made her European debut at Crosshaven at the end of the 1969 Transatlantic Race which led into the two year Clayton Love Jnr-inspired celebrations of the Royal Cork YC's Quarter Millennium. It was quite the introduction to what was happening on the American offshore scene, for in addition to bringing home the young Ron Cudmore who'd been working in America – Dick Nye loudly informed him he was officially the first "alien" to sail in Carina's crew in American waters – the Transatlantic race was won by Ted Turner's 12 Metre American Eagle, and the boats she beat included Huey Long's latest Britton Chance-designed maxi ketch Ondine, and Jim Kilroy's newest Kialoa, another serious biggie.
Aboard the new Carina in the 1972 Transatlantic Race from New York to Spain, with designer Jim McCurdy in foreground and Dick Nye with cigar. Thanks to some vague radio reports, Dick Nye reckoned that the calm area around the Azores was much larger than forecast, so he ordered an immediate change of course to sail due north for two days in which Carina got no nearer to the finish, but then in steady wins she sailed east again for the finish, and won by an enormous margin. Photo courtesy Sheila McCurdy
SYMBOLIC FASTNET ROCK
They were ultimately all on their way to do the 1969 Fastnet Race, thereby strengthening its symbolic role in world offshore racing. For although the Bermuda Race was first of them all, started in 1906 and partially creating the Fastnet Race in 1925, it was John Illingworth's presence in Australia in 1945 and his links to the Fastnet Race that gave hi the standng to propose the first Sydney Hobart race at Christmas 1945, and it was the Fastnet rather than the Bermuda Race that inspired both the Middle Sea Race from Malta from 1968, and the Round Ireland from 1980, the latter being the only other event in the RORC programme that takes in the Fastnet Rock itself, though of course other majors such as the Figaro Solo and the Class 40 championship use its iconic convenience as an oceanic turning mark as well.
PACIFIC PIONEERS
But before we get too excited about claiming so much for these historic offshore classics, let's have the honesty to admit that on the US's Pacific coast, they have to think big, as any truly offshore island destinations are thousands of miles away beyond the western horizon. Thus their races have to be much longer than the 600-700 miles classic which have developed elsewhere, but the irony is that when the first 2,225 mile TransPac Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii started on June 11th 1906, it got going precisely 15 days after the first Thomas Fleming Day-inspired Bermuda race from New York on May 26th 1906.
Newport Bermuda Race 2024 started in Newport Harbour at Fort Adams for the first time. 195 boats raced.
With distances so different, you'd think that would lead to a different frame of mind, yet Skip Allen of San Francisco's Ron Holland-designed 39-footer Imp of 1977 not only performed hyper-well in the Pacific, but went on to win the 1977 Fastnet Race overall and her class in the stormy 1979 Fastnet, and since then has become an ornament of the Irish sailing scene, taking 5th overall in this past week's Round Ireland Race campaigned by the two George Radleys – father and son – of Cobh.
So a boat from the Pacific coast can fit seamlessly into the offshore scene elsewhere, but how does it work the other way? Smoothly, it seems. We'd the story here recently of how Ken Corry, formerly Crosshaven through and through and a crewman on Moonduster, had gone to California to seek his fortune, is now Commodore of the Los Angeles Yacht Club and – perhaps more importantly – the proud owner-skipper of a beautifully restored Cal 40.
Pacific big-distance racing – Stan Honey's Cal 40 Illusion surfs in to the finish of the Transpac in Hawaii
You just can't get more California sailing than that, but the reality is it is yet another expression of the fact that going actively offshore racing wherever you may be establishes effortless easy-going inter-personal bonds that almost transcend understanding.
THE TWO-HANDED PHENOMENON
Back in 2011 after Carina had achieved yet another Bermuda Race win in 2010, I was writing a piece about the boat and got chatting to Rives Pott about her, and he was every bit as interested in talking about his 2011 Fastnet Race experience, when he'd found himself pacing with a two-man French crew, father and son, in a similarly rated boat, and he reckoned they or a similar crew would show up everybody one day by winning the Fastnet.
This was in the days when neither the Bermuda Race nor the Sydney-Hobart Race – the later very adamantly - would contemplate a two-person division. Yet in 2013 that same father and son team – Pascal & Alexis Loison in the JPK 10.10 Night and Day – won the Fastnet overall racing in the two-handed division, and French offshore racers – already very much on the up internationally – took the world by storm.
Father and son team of Pascal and Alexis Loison became the first two-handers to win the Fastnet Race overall with the JPK 10.10 Night and Day in 2013. Photo: Rolex/Kurt Arigo
Alexis Loison's subsequent successes included winning the 90-strong two-handed division in the 2019 Fastnet sailing with builder Jean Pierre Kelbert in the JPK 10.30 Leon. Photo: Rolex/Kurt Arigo
This reached such a pitch that various pressures were being applied to have a JPK boat in the Sydney-Hobart Race, and in the sort of crazy-yet-it-works arrangement that arises in the international offshore racing community, an almost-new French-owned JPK 10.80 cruising in the Pacific was tracked down and persuaded to detour to Sydney where ace skipper Gery Trentesaux and his crew would be waiting with a new suit of sails to race the boat to Hobart, which they duly did to such good effect that they won their class.
Classic creation from Crosshaven Boatyard in a very special year, The 1970-built Gipsy Month V. Photo: W M Nixon
TELEPATHIC UNDERSTANDING?
An almost telepathic level of mutual understanding operates in the inner circle of the offshore game, and we got a glimpse of it in 1970 when Francis Chichester's lovely last boat, the Robert Clark-designed Gipsy Moth V, was being built in Crosshaven. Being the second year of the Royal Cork Quarter Millennial, the RORC had a big race from Cowes to Cork where the fleet included a significant group from the East Anglian Offshore Racing Association, including the winning new prototype of the Don Pye-designed Hustler 35 being sailed by agent John Harrison and builder Leslie Landamore.
The upshot of all that came next year in 1971 when a motley band raced Ronnie Wayte's new Hustler 35 Setanta of Skerries to the Irish Sea Class B Championship and second in Class in the Fastnet. And then beyond that, relations continued so friendly with the East Anglia people that when I expressed an interest in cruising the Thames Estuary in 1975, Leslie Landamore simply said "Take my boat", and for a dozen wonderful days we had the use of the most beautifully-finished Hustler 35 of them all, exploring the famous swatchways and find ourselves immersed in Colchester smacks in Maldon, and savouring the sight in Pin Mill of Thames Sailing Barges, still to my mind the cleverest working sailboat of them all.
Thames Barges at Pinmill on the River Orwell. They are arguably the cleverest sailing workboat ever developed
This camaraderie of the sea was refreshed in 1992 when we took our newly-acquired Contessa 35 of a certain age down to Wicklow to be scrutineered for that year's Round Ireland race, and the scrutineers guiding us through that demanding process were the kindly and patient Chris and Anna Brooke, with a circle being completed in that Anna was Leslie Landamore's daughter.
A further circle was completed last weekend when – once the Round Ireland fleet was well away – there was a ceremony in Wicklow Sailing Club to make a presentation to Chris and Anna on their retirement from RORC scrutineering for the Round Ireland after 34 years of selfless service, the mixed emotions of the event typifying the mutual understanding and shared enthusiasms which keep much of the international offshore racing scene on the move.
The end of an era. Long-serving RORC scrutineers Chris Brooke (second left) and his wife Anna (nee Landamore,right) take their leave of Wicklow SC's president Peter Shearer (left) and Commodore Karen Kissane (second right) after 34 years of exceptional service to the Round Ireland Race. Photo: WSC
I'd seen this already when former Commodore Michael Boyd hosted his RORC breakfast at the RIYC on the morning of the Friday before the race, with people at every level of the sport, both its participation and its administration, quietly comfortable with each other. And then before Friday was out, vague rumours were circulating that Moonduster was being saved from her tomb in Trondheim.
In harmony. SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race organiser and former Wickow SC Commodore Kyran O'Grady with Deb Fish, Commodore RORC, in Dun Laoghaire for the RORC Round Ireland breakfast at the Royal Irish YC. Photo: W M Nixon
On Wednesday this week and almost together, there came the confirmation - with photo – that Moonduster was indeed up in the travelhoist and looking much better than we might have hoped. And almost immediately afterwards came the news that the incomparable Carina had won her fourth Bermuda Race, to be "the winningest Bermuda Race boat of them all". There is indeed a special dimension to life around the dedicated offshore racing crowd.
No longer just an increasingly sad memory. Moonduster will sail again. Photo: Afloat
